


Dislocated

by KittyRedRose



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Asphyxiation, Blood, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Keith gets hurt, M/M, Mutual Pining, Strangulation, Violence, Whump, Whump Fic, but Shiro is there, like bad, limited medical knowledge, pining shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 11:17:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13165803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyRedRose/pseuds/KittyRedRose
Summary: Shiro could only watch as it happened.He and Keith had been ambushed while navigating the oddly blue jungle of an alien planet in response to a fading distress beacon.“Get back to your lions!” Allura had shouted through their comms, herself and the rest safely back at the castle orbiting the small planet, followed by Pidge shrieking, “It's a trap!”But it had been too late.





	Dislocated

Shiro could only watch as it happened. 

He and Keith had been ambushed while navigating the oddly blue jungle of an alien planet in response to a fading distress beacon. 

“Get back to your lions!” Allura had shouted through their comms, herself and the rest safely back at the castle orbiting the small planet, followed by Pidge shrieking, “It's a trap!” 

But it had been too late. 

The Galra tackled Keith, his superior size toppling them both over, Keith wedged underneath the Galra’s full weight. Shiro took a blow to the back from another attacker, cracking the jetpack with a hiss of released air, punishing him for not paying attention to his own fight. He whipped back around, and the violet glow of his right arm reflected in his visor as he threw another punch at the Galra keeping him occupied and away from Keith. 

Keith was shouting obscenities, struggling and kicking under the Galra, his bayard laying useless on the ground too far out of reach, when the blunt end of a blaster crashed into his helmet. He felt the metal crumple and split under the force, followed by the warm rush of blood down his face from his temple. He only had a brief moment to be glad the atmosphere of the alien planet was at least breathable before his helmet completely cracked open and he was staring into the barrel of the Galra’s blaster. 

“No!” Shiro shouted, dispatching the Galra attempting to shove a blade through his midsection by finally throwing him to the floor and dropping his foot onto his skull with a sickening crunch. He broke into a sprint towards Keith, pushing the knowledge that he was too far away to the back of his panicking mind. 

The Galra’s lips pulled back in a toothy grin, and that was all the time it took for Keith to do something impulsive. 

He slammed his head into the blaster, knocking it off trajectory as the startled Galra pulled the trigger. It shot wide, blazing past Keith’s head, and he swore he felt the heat of the plasma shoot pass the shell of his ear. 

His knee connected with the Galra’s stomach next, forcing the breath from his lungs and giving Keith the leverage he needed to flip their positions. The Galra gasped, refusing the let go of his blaster as the two went tumbling across the ground, Keith wrapping his hands around the barrel in an attempt to keep it pointed away from his face, a stray shot scalding down the barrel and burning his palms through his suit. 

But the Galra was substantially larger, and twisted them rolling towards the edge of the plateau. 

“Keith! The cliff!” Shiro was shrieking, but Keith couldn't hear him through his own shouting and will to stay alive. 

The Galra knew what he was doing, and released the blaster to Keith only to wrap his enormous hands around the Red Paladin’s exposed neck. The Galra flipped them one last time, the edge of the cliff mere centimeters from the Paladin’s shoulders, dropping off into the blue-misted jungle. He squeezed his hands together like a vice, claws ripping into soft, pale flesh, and watched the Paladin’s mouth open wide, soundlessly begging for air that wouldn't come. 

Keith dropped the blaster from his trembling, scalded hands, panic forcing him into blindly grasping at the clawed hands around his throat. The world narrowed down to his oxygen-starved lungs and the sharp-toothed sneer above him, so close he could feel damp breath leaking out between the gaps of its fangs against his bloody face. 

Someone shouted his name, but it sounded far away. Shiro, what was left of his barely functioning brain supplied, and his wet eyes strained to find him in the fog of his clouding vision. 

The Galra above him snarled and forced his weight onto Keith’s neck with one hand, releasing his other and snatch the blaster back up. Keith would have screamed if he had had the open airways to do so, his neck close to snapping under the pressure, when he finally noticed what the Galra was pointing his blaster at.

Shiro locked eyes with Keith, only two arm lengths too far away, when the hollow barrel of a plasma blaster lifted between his eyes. 

Everything that followed was too fast and too loud. 

Keith locked his legs around the Galra and twisted, and they both went over the edge of the cliff, the sound of rapid blaster fire and Shiro’s screams echoing down the chasm after them. 

Shiro dropped at the edge of the cliff, searching desperately through the pale blue mist and faintly glowing foliage, but aside from a broken branch and a seared hole in a tree trunk he could see nothing of either of them. 

“Keith!” He shouted, “Keith!!” 

The comm in his helmet fizzled to life, and for half a heart beat Shiro almost breathed easy, until he noticed Keith’s helmet at his knees, split in two and spattered with blood a deeper red than its iconic paint job. 

It was Pidge’s voice. “Shiro? Shiro! What's happened?!”

Shiro forced down the urge to be sick. “Keith,” he took a deep breath. “Keith went over the edge of a cliff.”

 

With his jetpack damaged beyond safe use, climbing down the cliff face took far too long, every passing minute hammering terrible images of Keith’s possible fate into his already panicked brain. Pidge’s voice was the only thing that kept him from losing it.

“The planet’s surface suffers from excessive rainfall and humidity,” she droned on. “Of course it’s own inhabitants are used to it, and evolved to live quite comfortably in it, but you’re suit lacks traction in such damp conditions. Be careful.”

“I will be,” he replied, even as he increased his pace, and his metal hand slipped off its hold on the cliff face. He gasped, sliding down a few extra feet until he grabbed into a protruding rock.

He took another steadying breath and resumed at a more careful pace. He was no good to Keith dead.

He finally made it to the bottom of the climb, and looked back up to truly gauge the distance. It was a far drop. Too far of a drop for Keith, with the full weight of a Galran soldier atop him, to walk away from without issue, and he swallowed thickly at the idea.

“You’ll find him,” Pidge said, for the umpteenth time, and he made himself believe her. “He can’t be far.”

And she was right. After searching the poorly lit underbrush for almost another half hour, he finally found him. 

He jumped over the Galra’s body on the ground, tangled in vines and branches and with a violet-tinted knife wedged in his skull, and slid to his knees beside Keith. He was on his stomach, struggling and twisting to right himself, and while his left leg kicked and pressed for traction on the damp grass, his right leg was abnormally still.

“Shiro,” he gasped out just as Shiro managed a desperate, “Keith!”

His hands were on the boy as soon as he was close enough, grabbing at his shuddering shoulders and attempting to sit him up, but a strangled yell from his abused throat stopped him before he even got his back off the ground.

“No, no, don’t!” Keith was shouting, sweat on his furrowed brow, and he was gasping in pain.

Shiro laid him back out immediately. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Where are you hurt?” he asked, frantic, just as he glanced back to his legs, and he recognized the unnatural jut of his hip and the way his right leg was twisted in towards his left. “Oh no.”

“I-I can’t move my leg,” Keith gasped out, the true realization of it finally setting in, and his panic grew. “Shiro, I can’t move my leg.”

Shiro took a hold of him again. “I’m going to turn you over, okay?” Though it was phrased like a question, it came out as a warning. 

Keith immediately tried to protest, throwing his arms out in an attempt to hold himself exactly where he was, but Shiro was significantly stronger. Another shout was pulled from his throat as he felt his bones grating against each other in his hip, the pain doubling with the movement. 

“Please! Please stop!” he was shouting, until he was finally laid on his back, his fingers bone-white as he gripped Shiro’s forearm tight enough to leave bruises. 

Shiro’s free hand was brushing down his side, attempting to soothe him. “Hush, hush. Oh god, I’m sorry,” he kept repeating. 

Keith was gasping when he was finally settled, and then Shiro saw the blood on his face and his side, seeping through cracked armor and smeared across its rumpled white finish, dented so far in that it was effecting Keith’s already strangled breathing. He undid the clasps on the side of his chest piece, lifting it away gently to let Keith’s chest expand fully again and see the damage--a shot from the Galra’s blaster at near point blank range, leaking dark blood onto his too pale skin. Keith was shaking now, and Shiro knew it had nothing to do with the chilly air. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he said softly, brushing his hand across Keith’s bloodied face as he gasped and keened. He noticed Keith’s hands when they reached for his arm, gripping tight to his bicep despite their inflamed burns.

Shiro pressed the communicator on his helmet, steadying his own breath. “Pidge, I found him. Do you copy?”

The static that followed was quickly interrupted by her voice, her relief all too audible. “Copy. What’s his status?”

“Not good.” Shiro braced himself, letting Keith keep his death grip on his arm as the boy fought to maintain his consciousness. He had to have a concussion, Shiro deduced from the wound to his head. “The Galra that attacked us are dead, but Keith’s hurt in a bad way.”

“How?” Pidge demanded, followed by the clang of what he could only assume to be something metal hitting the floor.

With his eyes screwed shut, Keith ground his teeth together, but it did nothing to hide the whimper that left his throat.

“His hip looks dislocated--he can’t move his leg.”

Shiro heard her swear. “Grab his foot and ask him if he can feel it.”

Shiro did as she asked, squeezing his ankle through his boots, but Keith shook his head, his eyelids sliding open just enough to lock his gaze with Shiro’s, and all he could see in his violet eyes was swelling panic.

“He can’t,” he said over the comm, returning his other hand to Keith’s side and trying to stem some of the bleeding. “He’s got a blaster wound on his side too. I don’t know if anything is broken from the fall.”

“Fuck,” Pidge said again, and then she took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to reduce his hip, Shiro.”

“What?” he shouted, the blood draining from his face. 

It was clear Keith had heard her too, jerking up and wedging an elbow underneath himself. “No!” he shouted, “No no no no!” He began pushing at Shiro’s arm, still at his side, trying to get away. “He can’t! Are you crazy?!” 

“Pidge,” Shiro said, voice cracking, “I-I can’t do that. Fuck I can’t do that! Can’t it wait until I get him--”

“No, Shiro,” Pidge cut him off, the sounds of Keith’s pleading gasps filling the silence afterwards. “It can’t wait,” she said, stern. “It will take hours for you just to get him to lions, not to mention piloting back to the Castle. The longer his hip goes out of socket, the more chances of permanent damage. It’s already damaged his sciatic nerve. If it’s blocking too many blood vessels his leg will die, Shiro.” 

He opened his mouth to protest again, but no words came out.

“Healing pods don’t regrow limbs, Shiro,” she said. 

“Please, Shiro!” Keith was pleading, and his voice broke with a hitched gasp as he jostled himself too much. “Please don’t! Please don’t do this!”

“Let me talk to Keith,” Pidge said, and Shiro almost didn’t hear her over Keith’s shouting. He was practically numb as he removed the helmet from his head and placed it over Keith’s.

He was shouting at her before he could even press the button to open communication. “Please! Please, Pidge, don’t make him do this! Tell him not to! He can’t do this!”

“Keith!” she said, trying to interject her words between his pleads, “Keith listen to me! Do you want to lose your leg?!”

He sucked in another gasp, followed by a broken, keening, “Please.”

She had never heard Keith like this. Despite everything that had happened to them, all the damage they had taken, she had never witnessed Keith crumpled so completely. She remembered Shiro mentioning the Trials, and how Keith had pushed himself to breaking. When they returned, Shiro had been the only thing holding Keith together. 

“Keith, he has to do this,” she said. “The longer your hip goes untreated the more extensive the damage will be.”

Shiro held the boy’s head between his hands as his face contorted into a sob, the man’s thumbs rubbing circles on the hot skin of his neck, between the hand-shaped bruises and claw marks. He was bent over him close enough to hear Pidge’s firm voice over the comm. 

“I’m going to talk him through the whole way,” she said, and Keith nodded shakily, more to himself and Shiro. “You can do this. You’re the bravest person I know, Keith. Just be strong for this. Be strong for us.” He nodded again, attempting to hold back another sob, his entire body trembling with the force of it, and Shiro took back the headset. 

“Tell me what to do.”

“Give him something to bite down on,” she said, and he glanced around the underbrush to find a few thick vines. He twisted them together and placed them between Keith’s teeth. “Yeah.”

“This isn’t going to be easy for either of you,” Pidge said, and the despair was clear in her voice. “Try and keep him as calm as you can. If he’s not in shock by now he probably will be when you’re done.” Shiro swallowed loudly through his dry throat. “Which side is dislocated?”

“His right,” he replied, just as Keith grabbed his hand, squeezing until his fingers felt numb.

“Okay, get on one knee on his right side,” she said, “It should be you left leg that’s up--the one closest to his hip. You don't have anything to strap him down, do you?”

Shiro did a quick survey of the alien area and found nothing of use. “No, not that I can see.”

“Okay. You’re going to lift his leg up and over your own, using one hand to push down on his ankle and the other to hold him down just above his hip. Flex your own leg and try to lift his up at the knee by going to your toes, okay?”

Shiro took a deep breath, trying to steady himself as he took the position she told him too. He paused for a moment, his hands hovering over Keith’s leg. “I’m going to start,” he said, to both Keith and Pidge. 

Keith’s eyes met with his own, the fear climbing up the back of his throat having taken a full and terrible hold of him now, his wide eyes wet and his chin trembling. 

“I’m so sorry,” Shiro said again, and grabbed onto his leg.

Keith was shouting through the gag before he could even place his leg over his own.

“Keep going,” Pidge told him calmly, “Don’t stop. Don’t listen to him--listen to me.” That was impossible. There was no way that he could block out Keith’s screams. It was agony tearing through his throat, and he fought his own demanding urge to reach out and wrap him in his arms. 

He braced Keith’s knee over his own, then placed his hands as Pidge said. Keith was trying to fight back as soon as Shiro’s large hand pressed down on his waist. Reflex, Shiro told himself, even as Keith’s nails cut bloody crescents into the skin of his arm through the black fabric of his suit--until he realized he could feel one of his ribs giving way, no doubt fractured from his fall.

“Push down on his ankle and lift with your knee,” Pidge reminded him. 

He did.

Keith was sobbing around the gag when he wasn’t shrieking, thrashing hard against the weight Shiro pushed him down with. “Stop!” he managed out, sounding strangled, “Please! Stop stop stopstopstop!” 

Shiro took a strangled breath of his own. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he kept repeating, even as he flexed Keith’s leg harder over his own. It was taking an eternity, and he didn’t know just how long he or Keith would last.

“Keep pushing,” Pidge said. “Use the hand holding his ankle to twist his leg back and forth.”

Shiro felt his stomach drop at the idea. “Hold on, Keith,” he said, though he knew the boy probably couldn’t even hear him anymore. “Just hold on for me.” Keeping the pressure on, he began to twist.

Keith slammed his head back against the ground, the pain surging through every nerve ending he had. Under his own wailing he could hear his bones grating viciously against each other as Shiro twisted. Whenever he attempted to crack open his eyes, everything was too bright, the pain beating against the back of his eyeballs until his vision began to narrow to a thin point. His throat felt like it was going to tear, and he knew he wasn’t getting enough oxygen through his own screams and the vines between his teeth. 

“Don’t baby him, Shiro,” Pidge said, far too stern. “You’re prolonging it. Use your fucking muscles and push!”

Shiro wanted it to stop. He wanted this all to be over with. By Keith’s screams he was pulling too much already, and he didn’t think he had it in him to hurt him anymore like this. 

He tried twisting his leg in hard, and Keith broke down into wet, gasping sobs, pushing against Shiro’s arm to get away with all the strength he had left in his quivering muscles, and Shiro realized just how weak he had become. Neither of them were going to make it much longer.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Shiro bore down on the boy’s leg again, feeling the fractured rib under his left hand bend inward sickeningly. Keith was losing the fight in him, and that somehow was even more worrying to Shiro than his thrashing. His uninjured leg had stopped kicking, and Shiro realized the thin, pale hands at his forearm were no longer pushing back. The boy tried to keep a hold of him, even as his bloodied hands slid down his arm. He was sobbing between gasps of air, his head lolling to the side, facing away from Shiro.

Shiro felt the quaking muscles in Keith’s leg give, felt them stretch out with his excruciating pulling and twisting, and suddenly there was an audible pop.

“I-I did it,” he gasped, low and under his own breath, his eyes wide as he loosened his bruising grip on Keith’s flesh, but when he pulled his metal hand away from his ankle, he noticed the deep dents in the white armor. 

His comm startled him from his terrible realization. “Test it,” Pidge warned, no relief in her voice. “Take his hip through a full range of motion.”

Keith had gone quiet, and Shiro registered it as the loudest thing he had heard yet. Pidge’s voice fell into background noise, and he placed his leg down immediately, crouching over the boy and reaching for his face. 

“Keith?” he asked, voice thin, “Keith?” He cupped his face and tilted it back towards him, earning a pained keening noise in response, but at least it was something.

“Don’t let him fall asleep,” he registered Pidge warning, “We don’t know if he has a concussion or not yet.”

He patted the side of Keith’s face gently. “C’mon, Keith, you gotta open your eyes and look at me.”

After squeezing tighter for a brief moment, the boy’s eyelids parted. His pupils were blown wide, unable to focus, and his dark brows above them were furrowed in residual pain. Shiro made to pull the gag from his mouth, and had to gently rub at the sides of his jaw to get his muscles to unclench.

Keith felt the soggy vines leaving his mouth, and the ache of his jaw finally caught up with him. He tried to lift a hand to rub at the drying blood on his face, but even the barest movement sent him reeling again, a moan leaving his lips, and he didn’t have the energy to hold it in.

Shiro was there though, with his warm hands and gentle voice, brushing the flakes of dried blood from his skin, hushing his final hitched sobs.

“It’s over,” Shiro told him, “It’s all over, baby.” If Pidge had heard the pet name, she didn’t comment.

Keith nodded, or attempted to nod, reaching a hand up and sliding his palm--cold despite his burns--against the back of Shiro’s hand until their fingers slotted together.

“I thought I might have lost you,” Shiro said, swallowing around the words.

Keith’s mouth worked for words, his throat bruised and bloody. “I-I had t’ do s’m’thing.”

Shiro slipped his helmet off and bent over him completely, pressing their foreheads together as he breathed in roughly, something swelling inside him. The same something that had him calling the other Paladin “baby” with a growing frequency. 

“Something didn’t have to be throwing yourself off a cliff,” he said, voice rough and close to breaking. 

He felt one of Keith’s shaking hands in his hair. “‘I thought,” Keith’s voice below him rumbled, low and breathy and barely there, “I thought I was going to lose you.”

Shiro hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath until he let it out in one dry sob, taking Keith’s head in both his hands and pressing his lips to his forehead. “Not this time,” he whispered against his feverish skin. “Not again.”

The visor of his helmet flashed twice, and Shiro pulled back just enough to place it over his head again.

“How’s he doing?” Pidge asked him over the comm. 

Shiro checked him over once more, using the extra time before replying to Pidge to steady his breath and clear his throat. He ran his free hand down the rest of his body, and Keith flinched when he grazed over his broken rib. 

“His hip is swelling bad,” Shiro started, letting Keith keep a hold of his other hand, “And he’s got a fully broken rib now.” When he pulled his hand away from his side, he noticed the large amount of blood with a grimace. “His gunshot wound is bleeding bad.”

“Wrap it the best you can,” she told him, “It’s from his elevated blood pressure from reducing his hip. What’s his pulse like?”

Shiro placed his fingers at Keith’s neck, and realized how cold he felt. “It’s slow. And weak. He’s getting cold too.”

“Bundle him up and get him home.” It was a command if Shiro had ever heard one, and he was fine with following it. 

He wrapped Keith’s wounds the best he could with only one roll of bandages, pressing down firmly against the wound in his side. He was gentle with his burned palms, using some of the water from their canteen to wash them out and sooth the sting. Keith was a fighter, and the knife Shiro pulled from the Galra’s skull showed it. He cleaned the blade carefully and reverently before packing it away with Keith’s bayard.

“I’m going to pick you up,” he said, getting one arm under the boy’s shoulders and the other carefully under his knees. Keith sucked in his breath when Shiro lifted him, cradling his swollen hip against him in an attempt to help keep it immobilized. 

Keith managed to get his arms around Shiro’s neck, gingerly linking his wrapped hand together. Though he had no strength in his arms to help hold himself up, Shiro appreciated just feeling the weight of his arms against his skin. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” he said, nudging his face into Keith’s sweat-slicked hair. 

“”M trying,” he replied, barely a whisper. 

He wished Keith could fall asleep, at least while he was safe in his arms, just to escape the pain for a little while. “Talk to me,” he said instead, as he made his way through the rough terrain. “Can you wiggle your toes?”

He felt the shift and jitter of Keith’s muscles against him, followed by his quiet voice. “A li’l.”

“That’s good,” he said, just as he heard Pidge over the comm say, “Thank goodness.”

Keith made a low noise, somewhere between a humm and a groan, and Shiro hushed him gently, another wave of soothing phrases leaving his lips.

“Thank you.”

At first Shiro barely registered Keith had spoken--he felt like an exposed nerve himself, fluctuating between hyper awareness and a deep numbness that looked almost inviting. When he finally understood Keith’s words, he paused mid-stride. Keith was the last person who needed to be thanking him for anything. He could still feel the ghost of his rib breaking under his hand and the ringing in his ears sounded too much like his screams to be coincidence. 

He breathed out deep before kneeling for just long enough to brace Keith’s back with his knee and use his free hand to slip the helmet off his head again.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said softly, sounding strained, and Keith’s hands pulled weakly at the back of his neck, raising himself so he was face to face with the man. He paused there, as if he somehow understood the magnitude of the thing swelling up in Shiro’s chest, and then pressed his lips to the creased corner of Shiro’s lips. And then the other. And then finally the space between.

Keith was quiet when he pulled back, swallowing thickly. “Thank you, Takashi,” he murmured again, and settled back into the crook of Shiro’s neck. “For everything.”

Shiro swallowed at the sound of his name, at the feel of breath against his neck, at the taste still on his lips. “Of course, baby. Of course,” he said, and pressed his nose to Keith’s hair one more time, breathing in the smell of iron and sweat and Keith undoubtedly alive, before placing his helmet over the boy’s head.

“Talk with Pidge now,” he said softly, “I’m going to focus on getting us out of here.”

He stood again, hearing a shaky, “Okay,” from the precious bundle in his arms, before continuing through the underbrush. Keith’s voice was a quiet whisper as he replied to Pidge’s questions and attempted chatter over the comm, and the feel of the boy’s beating heart against his own was more of a comfort to him than Keith would ever know.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never dislocated my hip, just as a disclaimer. But I DO have unlimited access to the World Wide Web. I sure hope everything adds up.


End file.
